Monday, November 19, 2007

Great Green Collaborations in Furniture

Creative reuse of scrap wood by Scrapile furniture studio in New York. A collaboration between Carlos Salgado and Bart Bettencourt. Scrapile makes use of scrap wood from local woodworking shops that might otherwise throw out these valuable leftovers. Reuse or repurposing is the only true form of recycling.

Jenny Argie and Andrew Thornton's furniture designs for children under the name Argington, feature items that can adjust to grow with your child... sustainable design. Fun and simple furniture for kids. And trying to design something that won't be thrown away with all those disposable diapers is a noble goal and pretty green. Check out their simple Galap Rocker" below.









Photo credit to Argington furniture.

Monday, November 5, 2007

Cool Wooden Toys From the Future


"Yosegi-Mokuzougan, or joined wooden block construction, is a craft skill where combinations of original and unique colors and textures of different kinds of wood are utilized to express artistic patterns."

Takeji (Take-G) Nakagawa has taken this traditional technique and expanded on it, made it 3-D, and made it his own. Drawing from tradition and incorporating what can only be asian pop culture into his toys and sculptures. Check out the take-g toys site. This guy is amazing! Warm and futuristic, two words that normally oppose one another exist simultaneously in his work.

Difficult to purchase if you are not in Japan, hopefully, that will soon be remedied. Most of the site is in Japanese, but the work pretty much speaks for itself.